The rise of pirate libraries

(24 May 2016) All around the world, shadow libraries keep growing, filled with banned materials. But no actual papers trade hands: Everything is digital, and the internet-accessible content is not banned for shocking content so much as that modern crime, copyright infringement.

But for the people who run the world’s pirate libraries, their goals are no less ambitious for their work’s illicit nature.

“It’s the creation of a universal library of the best stuff,” says Joe Karaganis, who studies media piracy at Columbia University’s policy think tank, American Assembly. “That will not include the latest Danielle Steel novel.”

It does, however, include hundreds of thousands of books and millions of journal articles that otherwise are found only through expensive academic journals. Scanned or downloaded from journal sites, they are available through pirate libraries for free.